Awards and Juries

International Jury

Composed of important film professionals, this jury presents the Best Film Award and Best Director Award in the International Competition.

Ezra Winton

Canada

Co-founder and Director of Programming of Cinema Politica. He is a film critic and Contributing Editor at POV Magazine, and a film & media educator and researcher with a focus on Indigenous media arts, documentary and world cinema, film festivals and curatorial practices and politics. He is currently finishing a book on the Hot Docs film festival as well as a collected volume on documentary film festivals with Spanish scholar Aida Vallejo. Ezra is a Visiting Scholar at Lakehead University and Curator-In-Residence at Concordia University.

Elizabeth McIntyre

Great Britain

Liz McIntyre is the CEO and Director of Sheffield Doc/Fest, one of the world’s leading documentary and factual storytelling festivals. She began her career as a documentary maker, with credits such as the Ed Murrow award-winning The Lost Children of Berlin (Steven Spielberg, Shoah Foundation), No Place Like Home (BBC), Dangerous Love (BBC) and Five Steps to Tyranny (BBC) for Human Rights, Human Wrongs.

McIntyre moved to commissioning for the Discovery Channel, with titles such as Ed Stafford Marooned; You Have Been Warned; The Great White Silence and Shackleton in association with the British Film Institute, and The Battle of Ancre and Advance of the Tanks in association with the Imperial War Museum.

McIntyre ran Documentary Campus Masterschool 2015 in Berlin, a development and mentoring programme for emerging filmmakers. She is a Board member for Women in Film and Television and sits on the BAFTA TV and BAFTA Learning & New Talent Committee.

Rokhsareh Ghaemmaghami

Iran

Iranian filmmaker and two times Sundance winner. In her work, she focuses mainly on the liberating power of art. She makes documentaries about outsider artists in Iran, especially women who try to raise their voices through art although they do not have any formal education and their life circumstances make it very unlikely to become an artist. Her film Sonita (2015) about an 18-year-old Afghan female rapper won the Audience Award at One World 2016.

Václav Havel Jury

This jury awards the prize to a film that makes an exceptional contribution to the defence of human rights. It is comprised of human rights advocates, international representatives of the non-profit sector and donors.

Mai Khôi

Vietnam

Vietnamese singer and composer, the first Vietnamese celebrity in history to nominate herself for the National Assembly (equivalent to congress) on a pro-democracy platform. This campaign was successful in that it sparked a nationwide debate about political participation and democracy while discrediting the legitimacy of the electoral process. She was unfairly rejected from running in the election by the Communist Party, placed under constant police surveillance, and the police shut down one of her concerts in Ho Chi Minh City. Due to her activism, she is effectively banned from performing in Vietnam; show organisers do not dare invite her to sing out of fear of reprisals from the authorities.

Lina Ben Mhenni

Tunisia

Lina was the first to report on the turmoil in central Tunisia in 2010, which later led to the revolution and the Arab Spring. Actively advocating for human rights, women's rights, freedom of expression, she draws attention to the problems and challenges of the ongoing democratization in Tunisia, and is very active on Twitter and Facebook. She is one of the main characters of the movie Plus Jamais Peur, which was introduced in Cannes. She received various prizes (Deutsche Welle, etc.). Speaker at various TEDx events, conferences (Geneva Human Rights Summit, etc.), and was nominated for the Nobel Prize. She performs and publishes in various media (CNN, The Guardian, AlJazeera, etc.).

Leszek Jażdżewski

Poland

Polish journalist, columnist and NGO activist. In 2008, he founded the journal, web portal and blog platform LIBERTÉ!, where he still works as the editor-in-chief. As a liberal opponent of nationalist and conservative tendencies, he co-launched the campaign Świecka Szkoła (Secular School). He is the creator of the project Igrzyska Wolnosci (Freedom Games), a unique interdisciplinary meeting of experts, intellectuals, reporters and writers from Poland and surrounding countries about the key challenges the Western societies must face in the 21st century. He is a council member of European Forum for New Ideas, a Marshall Memorial Fellow, appointed as one of 25 young leaders for the next 25 years by a foundation “Teraz Polska” (“Poland Now”).

Aizat Shakieva

Kyrgyzstan

Feminist, human rights activist, single parent activist. She has worked for four years as a journalist and editor in one of the most popular news website www.kloop.kg and in the human rights portal Voice of Freedom in Kyrgyzstan. She also has experience in working with communications in Freedom House in Kyrgyzstan in 2014-2015 years. During the last four years, she has engaged herself in feminist activism, coordinating public union Bishkek Feminists Initiatives. Besides, she coordinates the Coalition for Equality, which promotes human rights, justice and non-discrimination values. The Coalition is currently working on developing the draft of a bill promoting Equality for all social groups.

Vanessa Siliezar

Honduras

Lawyer and teacher of human rights and gender studies at the CURLA/UNAH in La Ceiba, Honduras. She is an active proponent of gender equality and women’s access to healthcare, education, justice, employment, social and political participation, etc. She also deals with problems of teen pregnancies and HIV awareness, and inspires women’s leadership in sustainable social change throughout the region.

Czech Competition Jury

The best Czech documentary films or co-productions focus mainly on Czech themes and seek answers to serious questions about issues like childcare or national security.

Ileana Stanculescu

Romania

Romanian director and producer. She studied at the Konrad Wolf Film University in Potsdam-Babelsberg, graduating in 2004 with the documentary Podul peste Tisa, which won among other prizes the First Appearance Award at the IDFA. Later on she directed the documentary Satul sosetelor which was nominated for the Joris Ivens Award at IDFA 2006. In 2007, she participated in the Nipkow Program in Berlin with the documentary project Noosfera, selected for the mid-length competition at IDFA and awarded at several European festivals. She is the festival coordinator at CinéDOC-Tbilisi since its first edition, while she worked also for other projects, such as Docstories Black Sea, Cinediaries and Cinemobile Caucasus.

Wieland Speck

Germany

German filmmaker, actor and programmer. Between 1993–2017 he was the head curator of the Berlinale Panorama, currently he serves as the Advisor to the Official Programme of the Berlin International Film Festival. In his work, he focuses on the men's movement and homosexual identity. He is the director, author and producer of several TV and film productions, amongst them Westler – East of the Wall (1985) and Escape to Life (2000). Wieland Speck has been curating numerous programs for German and international film festivals and continues his work also as a member of various jurys at international film festivals.

Haruka Hama

Japan

Japanese producer and coordinator of the Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival (YIDFF) since 2001 and the director of Tokyo Office since 2015. She also works for Cinematrix, a film distribution company based in Tokyo. Hama coordinated programs at YIDFF like Okinawa: Nexus of Borders: Ryukyu Reflections, Islands / I Lands—Cinemas in Exile, Vista de Cuba and more. She co-founded with the art curatorial unit cimarcus. She also curated the film program for the Aichi Triennale 2016, in which Takamine Go's feature-length film Hengyoro (Queer Fish Lane), the film that Hama produced, premiered.

Student Jury

This jury awards a prize for the best movie in the festival’s selection of films for students. It is chiefly composed of secondary school students who are organisers of One World in Schools student film clubs.

Kateřina Drápelová

Czechia

Kateřina (17) lives in Třebíč, where she studies at the Grammar School for the seventh year. She helps with the organization of the One World Festival in Třebíč, and she also organizes the film screenings in her school. She is active in the student administrative bodies and also co-operates with the Lumos charity. She is very keen on sports, especially skiing and swimming. After finishing the high school, she would like to study Medicine.

Sufian Massalema

Czechia

Sufian (18) lives in Smržovka and attends the Doctor A. Randa Grammar School in Jablonec nad Nisou, where he actively participates in the school projects. In the last year, he finished third in the Looking for a LEADer competition, organized by One World in Schools. He aims at introducing the topics of Islam or the situation in the Arabic countries to his fellow students. After graduation, he would like to study Law or at the School of Social Sciences.

Beáta Vitovská

Czechia

Beáta (19) lives in Prague and studies in the final year at the Malá Strana Grammar School. She organizes the One World School Film Club and participates in the Student Summit. She considers as important to spread the general awareness among the other students. She likes travelling, swimming and taking care of her horse. She is preparing herself for the graduation, after which she would like to study at the Faculty of Law or in the field of International Area Studies.